


The Art of Memory

by tmelange



Series: Something of a Fool [2]
Category: DCU - Comicverse, DCU Animated, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Angst, Jealousy, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmelange/pseuds/tmelange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batman notices strange behavior between the Man of Steel and the Martian Manhunter. He investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a continuation of my story _Fourteen Days in (a Fool's) Paradise._ It's not really necessary to have read that story to understand this, but it would likely be somewhat helpful.

When they finally landed and exited the Javelin, Bruce was tired and bloody and on the verge of being _truly_ annoyed. His shoulder hurt like hell, his suit was ripped, there was mud caked in every conceivable crease and crevice – and The Flash refused to just _shut up._

"Hey Bats," The Flash called out after him as Bruce walked slowly down the aircraft ramp, "how long's this meeting gonna last?" The red-garbed speedster appeared at his side, talking about a mile a minute and daring anyone to dispute that annoying people to death via inane babbling wasn't his newest super power. "We got the bad guys. What's there to talk about?" He smirked. "Time's wasting away and this superhero's got a hot date."

Flash made as if to drape a companionable arm around the shoulders of the Dark Knight.

"I wouldn't," Bruce warned, at his most baleful.

Flash snatched his hand back as if he'd been burnt. "S' sorry," he mumbled, wincing.

Bruce watched, satisfied, as The Flash used his super speed to remove himself from harm's way and to catch up with Diana, J'onn and Superman who were all in an amiable grouping some distance ahead, talking and getting ready to exit the hanger bay on their way to the conference room for the debriefing.

"Are you alright?" Lantern asked, coming up on his right side. "No need to bite the kid's head off. He means well."

"I'm fine," Bruce replied, but he said it through clenched teeth as he turned away from Green Lantern and continued his discreet observation of Clark and J'onn as they walked side-by-side—two teammates who lately, more often than not, appeared connected at the hip, who, even in the middle of battle, seemed to gravitate towards each other as if they were negatively charged—or more precisely: as if Clark was the sun around which J'onn had somehow been permitted to establish an orbit.

Bruce could not shake the feeling that he was witnessing something that badly needed explanation, and no explanations were available. The incongruity of it all made it almost impossible for him to think about anything else.

He was the last to reach the conference room, having stopped at the main computer terminal in the womb to log the Javelin back in and to do a quick check of the Watchtower's internal security system and the worldwide surveillance log. As he entered the room, he immediately noticed the interpersonal placement of the other six members of the Justice League: how Lantern and Hawkgirl were standing at the foot of the table, engaged in a spirited conversation that had Shayera gesturing with her mace, while Diana and The Flash were seated next to each other in their usual places, laughing at some nonsense Flash was going on about, Bruce was sure, with the speedster's feet propped up on the table.

But it was Clark and J'onn that drew Bruce's attention, made him hesitate momentarily at the door, a tight knot of _something_ coalescing like a rock in the pit of his stomach, before he moved to his customary seat. They were standing together by the observation window, framed by stars, speaking with their heads close and Clark's hand on the Martian's arm, and it was as if Clark and J'onn were the only two people in the room – so completely did they exist in their own world. Bruce took note of the expression on J'onn's face. It was so… In all the months that J'onn had been working with the Justice League, Bruce had never seen him look at anyone with such an intensity of gaze. Bruce saw passion in the way J'onn's eyes seemed to caress Clark's face, he saw fire and knowledge, but also a fierce kind of tragedy. The depth of emotion written on the Martian's face for anyone to see served to fundamentally displace Bruce's equilibrium, like an internal earthquake.

"Let's get this over with," Bruce said tersely. His teammates seated themselves and proceeded to discuss their most recent run-in with Grodd's Legion of Doom.

When they finished, the Justice Leaguers rose from the table and made as if to scatter, all except Clark and J'onn, as Clark had responded affirmatively to J'onn's request for him to remain behind to speak about a matter of some importance. When Bruce stopped and tilted his head inquiringly, Clark merely told him to go on and that he would catch up with him later. Bruce's lips tightened into a small, grim line of disgust, but he had no choice other than to turn and go or risk a confrontation over nothing. With a swirl of cape, he exited the conference room.

He decided he would just clean up and then head back to Gotham. He missed his city. Everything was more comprehensible, more controllable in Gotham. As he splashed water on his face in the bathroom in his quarters, he could only stare at himself in the mirror, at the tight lines of tension framing the corners of his eyes, the way his mouth looked like it had never known the semblance of a smile, and realized that although Clark was back from his inexplicable vacation and although it seemed as if their relationship was back to normal, there was an ill-wind blowing, a dark tempest that hung over everything, waiting for a chance to rip through their settled routine with impunity. He turned off the water, raised the towel to his face and froze.

It started slow and soft, the music in his head. It swirled through his skull like a thread of heavy cream in hot coffee. It seeped down his spine.

Bruce finished drying his upper body slowly, then put the towel down and tried to decipher what he was feeling. In a rush, he garbed himself in a spare upper costume, replaced cape and cowl and headed out of the room and towards the substation computer terminal that was on the residential floor of the tower. It was instinct that directed him to switch on the monitor and access the surveillance feed in the conference room. Only instinct.

The unflinching eye detects, then the intellect names, and then the brain deduces – this was the routine that was as natural to Bruce, the detective, as breathing air. It wrapped him in impassivity, even when he could not believe the evidence of his own eyes.

Clark and J'onn were still in the conference room. J'onn was in his natural Martian form, the form Bruce hadn't seen since he and Clark had rescued him from the military holding facility. They stood looking at each other, communicating, Bruce thought, though not a word was said aloud. Until J'onn produced a globe and a folded piece of paper, and with head hung low, passed them to Clark. Bruce could see the wonder spread across Clark's face as he looked at the globe, looked within it for many moments, and then set it on the table and unfolded the note. Time seemed to pause as he read, and pick up again as he reached for J'onn and placed a hand at the junction of neck and shoulder.

J'onn's response was gentle, hesitant, strangely reverent. Bruce felt like a disgusting voyeur as he watched his teammates flow into each other like the sand and the sea, watched their lips meet, at first slowly then with a building passion that told Bruce the two of them were far from strangers: every touch, every movement displayed the knowing intimacy of long familiarity.

 _It’s supposed to be the obvious that everyone misses._

Bruce let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. A feeling, so intense that Bruce had no defense in the face of it, washed over the whole of his body, turning his skin hot and then cold. He had to reach out, grasp the edge of the console to regain his balance. He lifted a hand and turned the monitor off.

Bruce wrapped his thoughts around the things he knew to be true.

Clark was completely infatuated with Lois Lane. Although their relationship was still in the early stages, Bruce knew how happy she made Clark, how long he had pined for her attentions. Now that Clark had her love and trust and had revealed to her his biggest secret, Clark didn't have it in him to squander their future for some sort of momentary gratification. Bruce knew Clark Kent, he knew the man better than anyone; Clark was incapable of cheating on the person he loved. Lying and deceiving—or any of the ordinary machinations of the average male—were simply not part of his alien make-up.

It made no sense. _What had J'onn done to Clark to make him want this?_

Bruce needed to know more. He needed to know the _why_ of it.

He headed back to his quarters to sit in his room, on the bed, in the dark, until his internal clock told him that Flash would have left for his date, and Diana, Lantern and Shayera would have headed out to have dinner as they had discussed earlier in the day, and that Clark would have left the tower to do his rounds over Metropolis...and that J'onn would be on watch. Then he got up and exited his quarters, and made his way around the corridor to where Clark's room was situated.

Standing in front of the door he had opened with his override, Bruce drew a deep breath. He reminded himself that he was only investigating a potentially dangerous anomaly for the good of the team, and stepped over the threshold--and turned on the light.

It was sitting on the small night table by the bed, just like Bruce thought it would be. He picked it up, tapped down his natural excitement at holding in his hand a piece of Martian technology, and looked. Like the light through a prism—faceted splinters of Prussian color framed a moving image of blue fire and of ice, a captured image of Clark and J'onn, together, intimately, at the Fortress of Solitude.

Bruce set the globe down, and instead, picked up the folded piece of paper that it had secured to the table, and read it.

 _Kal-El,_

 _I have struggled to find a way to explain how I feel, but the only words that come to me are stale when they are not comic, and I would not have you laugh at me. So here is my memory of our time together, and your place in it, and in my heart. Always._

 _—J'onn_

The note fell from nerveless fingers. His face and eyes burned with lunar nothingness, but his whole body was on fire with mute, trammeled emotion, like the tight fear of having already lost something unique, something precious, before he had any awareness of its existence or its value.

Bruce picked up the note and placed everything back the way he'd found it, removing all evidence of his invasion. With a swirl of cape and a determined step, he exited the room and headed towards the hanger bay and the Batwing that waited for him. It was time to get back to work. His city needed him, and she was a demanding mistress. He relegated the images in the globe to the depths of his mind, convinced that what was between Clark and J'onn was unimportant except inasmuch as it affected the efficient operation of the team; that their affair was _nothing,_ that it _meant_ nothing. It was just an annoyance, like a pin pricking the finger as opposed to the sword through the heart, the knife that cuts the throat.

 _finis_


End file.
